kate and graeme

Should’ve put this post up yesterday, but the laptop never came out (well, mine didn’t… Graeme, of course, had his out within 10 minutes of walking in the door…).
Our first port of call in Australia ended up being Melbourne, but just the airport tarmac. Sydney was fogged in and we were diverted to Melbourne, along with a million other planes. We were 7 hours late by the time we finally landed in Sydney. Needless to say, those hours spent sitting in the plane in Melbourne made us eternally grateful for the wonders of frequent flyer points - business class was already sweet, but it would have been torture to get almost there and then spend 7 more hours crammed in economy. Before you ask, no, we weren’t allowed to leave the plane in Melbourne. The whole experience was frustrating, but we can’t fault anyone who was aboard the plane - the Qantas crew were fantastic.
So, after 3 years and 4 months, we’re back in Sydney. Home for now is with my parents and youngest brother in a house they moved to about the same time as we got married, so have never actually lived in. Lily is already getting used to having a bunch of new people around and everyone commented about how great she was on the flight. Looking forward to catching up with all our family and friends and settling back into life here.

Oh, and just so you know…
- We will eventually get around to posting about all the other trips we did while we were overseas.
- We plan to continue to use this site to document the things going on with us and our adventures back here in Australia.

We are currently in Singapore, writing this from a free computer in the Qantas Business Class Lounge.  The whole Business Class thing has been cool so far and Lily has been exceptional.  Though not sure how we would have handled her in economy.  Not long till we are in Sydney, we are so looking forward to seeing everyone.

I know I promised this to some of you awhile ago. To be honest, I started writing it about 2 months ago, but never got around to finishing and posting it. Anyway, I tried to make a wishlist thingy online, but it just wasn’t working for me the way I felt it should, so I decided to give you this little list of guidelines instead. Use them as you will.

Lily loves music.
She adores books and has even stopped trying to eat them… almost.***
There are already plenty of stuffed animals in our household.
Lovingly handmade (by you, or someone else) is always appreciated in our family.
Quality second-hand stuff is just as good as new.
If you want to buy her clothes, please be aware that she wears cloth nappies (so she has a big butt) and is pretty big for her age.
We are trying to refocus all areas of our lives to quality over quantity.
We would rather things that don’t require batteries.
We’re not anti-plastic, but do love things made of natural materials.
While pink is good, so is red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple…
Please remember Lily is only a year old.

Above all, it really is fine if you just get (or even better, make) a nice card with a thoughtful sentiment - she’s not going to remember turning 1, but she will enjoy looking back at things like cards when she is older.

***EDIT: The list of books we own is now up - you can get to it from the link up there on the right, under Pages.

Graeme has told his work, so now we can go public with it - we are moving back to Sydney!

In the first week of June, we will embark on the insane 24-hour trek from London to Sydney with an (almost) one year old in tow. Luckily, we have booked our flight with frequent flyer points and were able to get business class seats, so the three of us won’t have to cram into a space that’s barely big enough for two small adult humans (if you’ve ever met us in person, you will know that none of us fit into the category of ’small’). Hopefully though, Lily will fly as well as she has every other time and we won’t annoy the other passengers too much…

We will arrive back in Sydney just in time to celebrate Lily’s first birthday with family and friends (if you believe that should include you but haven’t received an invite to the party, please do let us know) and then… well, who knows. I kind of think moving back after three and a half years will be almost as big an adventure as coming over was, especially given how much our little family unit has changed.

See you all in 7 weeks or so…

(I know some of you were already aware of this - take this as your cue that you don’t need to be hushed about it anymore)

That’s right - 2 chocolate countries in 2 weekends. Graeme prefers Swiss chocolate, I prefer Belgian, Lily doesn’t get to have chocolate yet…

Saturday 21 March

It was so hard to wake up that we almost got to our second/backup alarm time, meaning we had to get dressed and leave in a big hurry. Thankfully, we made it to St Pancras international at exactly the right time to go straight through and onto the train and then we were on the Eurostar headed for Brussels. Once in Brussels, we were straight onto another train to Brugge.

Got ourselves a map from a little dispenser near the tourist information at the station (it cost us 50c and meant we had to buy some lollies to get change, but way faster than queueing at the tourist info) and then wandered into the city. We were glad we’d brought a stroller, but wish our big one was more compact because the little one was all over the place on the cobbled streets and walkways. Wandered through Brugge, which is full of very cool buildings, plus a generally beautiful place with canals and lots of old-world charm.

Ended up in big, main Markt square and had lunch there… well we went and bought sandwiches away from the square and then brought them back and sat in the square to eat - a much cheaper option. Once we’d had lunch, Kate checked out the haberdashery store we’d spotted while Graeme queued for the ATM (there seemed to be very few and the first one we found wouldn’t take our bankcard). Kate went and checked out some other stuff, including a Tintin shop, which was kind of cool, but also a bit insane, while Graeme continued to queue. Finally, he got some cash and we headed to our hotel via a walk through a park.

We checked into the hotel, used toilet and suitable baby-changing surface then back out (we seem to do this a lot - it’s often hard to find public amenities). After being in Belgium almost a whole day, we finally bought some chocolate (yum) and then our Harry Potter book (up to 2 of each book in assorted languages). Wandered a bit more then back to the hotel, where we had dinner in the hotel restaurant. Lily fell asleep part way through, so we stayed for dessert - it was a fantastic Belgian meal.

Sunday 22 March

Got up and sorted then checked out of the hotel. Bought breakfast from a supermarket, including a container of grapes - Lily loves grapes. Headed to the station via a section of Brugge we didn’t see yesterday, including some more pretty parks and canals.

We took the train back to Brussels, got a map from the station and headed out of the station straight into a huge trash and treasure style markets. Wandered through for a bit, but they seemed more trash than treasure, so we walked up the main boulevarde into the city centre - it was quite divy and somewhat neglected to start with but got nicer closer into the centre.

It was interesting that everything seemed to be in French here whereas Brugge was all Flemish and is less than an hour away. We grabbed some sandwiches from same chain as yesterday and sat in a square in front of the opera house to eat them. Can’t say it was especially pretty, but the same can be said for most of Brussels that we saw. Still a bit hungry and craving something warm, we got some fries in a cone (frittes) from a tiny shop with a long queue and then went to McDonalds to use their loo. We then explored the main Market square, which was the first really interesting part of the town, visually.

We walked up a hill via a craft Market to some formal gardens (unfortunately we had to go up lots of steps, which isn’t easy with a stroller, but we managed) made a little less formal by lots of graffiti.  Got up to the palace then walked around to main park, which had a nice fountain. We ended up staying here for a while because Lily woke up, so we had a play near the fountain. We then walked a different route back to the main square, via the big cathedral which is up on a hill and looks very impressive.

We got our one and only waffle (with icecream and chocolate) of the trip and as we were eating it, realised we had picked the one place serving it with Australian icecream. We decided to begin walking back to station, even though our train wasn’t due to leave for hours, because we were hoping that instead of putting us on the later train, we could get on an earlier one, since ours had been cancelled due to trackwork. We went via the famous peeing statue and found he had clothes on as part of a Unicef campaign.

Got to station and discovered that the train we thought left at 7.30 actually left just before 7, but we were lucky enough to get seats and again go straight through the process and onto the train - the train we had originally been told we were moved to would have got to London after 11, so it was much better to be back to St. Pancras at 8:30.
OK, here’s the photos…

We’ve been away plenty more than we’ve written about, but we keep putting off writing things up for various reasons, often thinking that we should catch up before we write about our latest adventure. Well, not anymore - we’re just going to get things up as often as we can and in whatever order they happen. Hope you don’t get too confused.

Okay, have finally finished the Wales post - you can find it below. Hoping to get some more posts up soon, of our other recent trips, but no guarantees.

It started off well, in that we sold the car last Thursday night. The car had been a bit sick and sorry for a while and we had got used to not using it. So it was good to get some money for it and not have the worry any more. We sold it to the first guy that came to see it also, which meant a lot of hassle was also avoided.

However things took a turn for the worse, as you know on Saturday morning we woke up to a sick Lily and ended up spending the day worrying over her, including a trip to the local hospital (we’ve done it once now, got the story, no harm, so never again). Luckily Lily was over the worst of the stomach virus pretty quick and by Sunday morning we were sure she was on the way to full recovery.

Not to be out done by Lily, first Kate (Sunday afternoon) and later Graeme (Sunday night / Monday morning) came down with the virus also. We both got it much worse than Lily I might add, both remarking on not remembering when we were last that ’sick’, if ever at all. Monday, therefore, wasn’t the greatest day ever and we were both glad to see the back of it and begin the road to recovery. Graeme was home from work Tuesday and Wednesday as we all recovered (albeit slowly) and Kate recovered a bit slower as she was doing the recovering for two.

So basically the week was a bit of a write-off and you might get your Christmas Cards a bit later than we wanted. Though it was good it was last weekend, as this weekend we are off to Copenhagen to enjoy the Christmas Markets there, and rack up Lily’s 5th country already.

Oh and a big Congratulations to my Mum for finishing her degree!

Want to have actual conversations with us, but get thrown by the whole time-zone difference and the fact we have a baby and you don’t wanna wake her by making the phone ring? Want to talk to us over the internet for free? Want to see Lily in real time?

Go here, download Skype, then add kate_and_graeme to your contact list (uh, and if your username isn’t going to make it obvious to us who you are, please include a message - we are unlikely to add any random person). You need at least a microphone and speakers, plus a webcam is good too (these days, a lot of computers, especially laptops, come with both - ours did), but otherwise it’s just a download and install deal. We even have a spare headset/webcam set we can send to someone, assuming Graeme knows where he put it - email me if you’re interested.

We’re trying to keep it turned on if we’re anywhere near the computer and able to take a call. Plus, we’re planning to definitely be on a fair bit around Christmas. You know you want to…

About time we did an update it seems. You may have noticed we finally (kind of) wrote up our Italy trip from last November. You might have also seen that we have been working on our website. So what else have we been up to? Not much and quite a bit all at the same time.

While we were home in Australia last September, we found out that I was about 5 weeks pregnant (most people who read this should know that already, but since we haven’t actually written it anywhere on the site yet, it seems the logical place to start our recap). We headed back to London and promptly packed up and moved house, a whole 2km away and even on the same bus route, but it has more space and is better suited to our needs.

In November, we went on the trip around Italy that we’d been eyeing for awhile, figuring that it wouldn’t be an option once a baby was thrown into the mix. On his first morning back at work after 2 weeks off, Graeme found out that his development team were all being made redundant. There was a period of a couple weeks when we didn’t know how long he’d have a job, but they decided to keep him and one other guy on for a few extra months, which gave us time to apply for new permission to be in the country (since we were here on a work permit tied to that company). Luckily, being a big international company, they offered him much more than the statutory payout (which would’ve only been about £900) so we were able to make the decision for me to not return to work, which with my dragged out ‘morning’ sickness and the unpredictability of being in a room of unknown London teenagers, reduced a lot of stress.

We had our first Christmas in London. The weather was horrible, but the day turned out pretty good. We had a very long lunch with a group of other Australians who came together because a bunch of them worked together at Graeme’s first programming job and are now living in London. We also got to spend some more time with one of the Aussie couples we had met on the Italy tour as they were doing a bigger trip around Europe. We spent New Years at home, mainly because I wasn’t up to doing anything.

In January we went to Telford. Yeah, I’d never heard of it either. But Graeme got sent out there to do some on-site client work and I went with him. While he hung out in an office, I checked out the area, including seeing some of the flooding that had recently hit and the oldest iron bridge in the world. Also in January, my morning sickness finally disappeared and we got to see Squishy actually looking like a baby on an ultrasound (as opposed to the strange-looking blob that it was at 11 weeks). We call the baby Squishy because we decided not to find out the sex and ‘it’ seems very informal - it’s kind of a reference to Finding Nemo when Dory names a baby jellyfish, but also a somewhat natural progression from Blobby, which was the first nickname Graeme gave the baby.

In February, we went to Anfield and saw our second live Liverpool match, which this time they actually won and scored goals at the end we were sitting. Since then, we haven’t really left the bounds of London, as I got bigger and slower, Graeme finished up at work and started the job hunt and we waited for the nice weather to hit (which it seems to have finally done this week). We’ve spent some time in our local park, which just happens to be Gunnersbury Park (a fairly well-known, very big green space), including playing in the snow on Easter Sunday. We finally got around to seeing the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum, even though it took a second trip to see them because there was a 45 minute wait the first time we went. We’ve also become ‘Friends’ of Kew Gardens, some very old but cool botanical gardens, which means if you come visit us we can take you for the day and you won’t even have to pay entry.

We’re now on the final few weeks before the baby is born (due June 2), getting everything sorted and wishing it would hurry up and be over with. Graeme starts his new job on Monday.